British Airways (BA) has been fined more than £183 million (US$229.28 million) after computer hackers last year stole bank details from hundreds of thousands of passengers, its parent group IAG SA said yesterday.
The British Information Commissioner’s Office intends to issue the airline with a penalty notice under the British Data Protection Act, totaling £183.39 million, IAG said in a statement.
The fine is equivalent to 1.5 percent of British Airways’ turnover in 2017, IAG added.
Photo: EPA-EFE
IAG chief executive Willie Walsh said it would consider appealing the fine as it seeks “to take all appropriate steps to defend the airline’s position vigorously.”
British Airways CEO Alex Cruz said that the airline was “surprised and disappointed” by the penalty.
“British Airways responded quickly to a criminal act to steal customers’ data,” he said in the statement.
“We have found no evidence of fraud/fraudulent activity on accounts linked to the theft. We apologize to our customers for any inconvenience this event caused,” Cruz added.
The airline revealed the hack in September last year, just a few months after the EU tightened data protection laws with the so-called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The stolen data comprised customer names, postal addresses, e-mail addresses and credit card information, but the 15-day breach, which was fixed on discovery, did not involve travel or passport details.
Following disclosure of the hack, the airline promised to compensate affected customers and took out full-page advertisements in UK newspapers to apologize to passengers.
Meanwhile, it described the mass theft as “a very sophisticated, malicious, criminal attack on our Web site.”
IAG is also the owner of Aer Lingus, Iberia, Level and Vueling, none of which were affected by the hack.
The GDPR establishes the key principle that individuals must explicitly grant permission for their data to be used.
The case for the new rules had been boosted by a scandal over the harvesting of Facebook Inc users’ data by Cambridge Analytica Ltd, a US-British political research firm, for the 2016 US presidential election.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”